Throughout the United States steps are being taken to improve clarifiers for separating oil and water. Heretofore, traditional oil/water separators used settling tanks and separation tanks to separate the emulsion consisting primarily of water with oil mixed therein. It is well known that oil and water are immiscible and that oil has a lower specific gravity than water. Accordingly, oil will rise to the top of a settling chamber and can be skimmed off using conventional methods. When the oil is skimmed from the top surface of the water, it is difficult to avoid collecting water with the skimmed oil. A typical conventional water/oil clarifier will skim the oil but the skimmed material will contain about 15% water. Conversely, the separated water usually contains oil at a ratio of about between 15 to 50 parts per million. Needless to say, the concentrations of entrained water in this skimmed oil presents processing problems downstream. The hydrocarbon presence of 15 to 50 parts per million in water renders it dangerous for consumption and usually requires additional treatment to remove the residual hydrocarbons present in the water. Further, oil generally has heavier components (e.g. asphalt) that have a higher specific gravity than water and those heavier components must be allowed to settle. This settling takes quite an additional amount of time and slows the separation process down dramatically.
The present invention achieves its intended purposes, objectives and advantages over the prior art devices through a new, useful and unobvious combination of component elements, which is simple to use, with the utilization of a minimum number of functioning parts, which is simple to use and has a minimum number of moving parts that are constructed of readily available materials. The invention can be manufactured at a reasonable cost because of the ease of assembly and testing.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a water clarifier that is extremely efficient in its separation of the oil and water components.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an oil/water clarifier that consumes very low amounts of energy in the purification/clarification process.
It is a still further object of the invention to produce a clarifier that utilizes the principle of ion collision and the exchange of free electrons to accelerate the clarification process.
It is a further object of the invention to clarify other liquids such as antifreeze having entrained hydrocarbons therein.
It is yet a still further object of the invention to provide a water clarification system wherein the separated water has no detectable hydrocarbons (less than ten parts per billion).
Lastly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a water clarification system having an ion collider and a separation chamber and a settling chamber and a collection chamber and a contaminant tank interconnected for continuous processing with external pumping means.
A final object of this invention to be specifically enumerated herein is to provide a water clarification system in accordance with the preceding objects and which will conform to conventional forms of manufacturer be of simple construction and easy to use so as to provide a device that would be economically feasible, long lasting and relatively trouble free in operation.